Strategies for Success: Front Loading

There are a lot of tips and tricks for winning, and one of the first ones you can take advantage of is front Loading.  (Another is paying attention to how your word counter counts dashes and adjust appropriately, but that’s another show.)

Front loading is the practice of trying to write as much as you can in the first few days or week.  It’s a good strategy, for a couple of reasons.

One, it’s easier sometimes to write when you’re int hat first blush of excitement.  The words just pour out.  Not to mention that if you’re plantsing, you might have an idea for some scenes, but that’s about all you get.  Once that list runs out, you’ll be working as you go.

You’re also going to have some days in November that no matter how much you want to, and no matter how much you try, you are still going to get hardly anything done.  Your life will explode somehow during the month.  It happens to us all.  Busy season at work.  Family stuff happens.  School.  You get sick.  Your dog gets sick.  Thanksgiving along can tank a person’s word count for days (or boost it, depending on how your schedule goes).

Working from ahead is a LOT easier than trying to catch up from behind.  Feeling like you need to write a few thousand words before you can even START for the day can be discouraging.  But keeping ahead of that goal line on your chart (you stare at your chart all the time, right?  right?) is very awesome.

So if you’ve got an extra hour today, pump out a few hundred extra words, even if you’ve already met your goal.  Then maybe a few hundred more.  You’ll thank yourself at the end of the month.